Make Your Self A Better Candidate

Careers and Colleges, Sept, 2000 by Diana Yap

Five students share their success stories about how they stood out from the admission pack.

If you're trying to get into today's most selective colleges, you know the competition is stiff Nowadays, it can take more than high grades and test scores to gain admission. You have to distinguish yourself from your accomplished peers. This often means having something a little extra special in your background that demonstrates you will make a unique contribution to a college campus.

"We look for students who are involved in activities beyond the classroom," says Richard Backer, assistant vice chancellor of enrollment management at the University of California, San Diego. "These students add vitality to our campus.

Here are five students who improved their chances of college acceptance through leadership, summer experience, community service, sports, and taking time off before college. Plus, we interviewed some admission counselors to find our what they look for in each of these areas.

The Leading Edge

Ian Davie's e-mail user name--"lansuper-star"--says it all. At La Grande High School in Oregon, Davie served as senior class representative, National Honor Society president, vice president and treasurer of Mock Trial, organizer of spirit weeks and pep assemblies, and homecoming king in the fall and homecoming prince in the winter. Davie was even known to don his school's tiger mascot costume to publicize fund-raising events--like a school car wash--that he helped organize. Keeping up with this exhausting schedule was worth it. His impressive background helped him secure admission to the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

Davie credits the way he gets along well with people for landing him in leadership positions. And conversely, learning to be a leader improved his people skills. When Davie was planning spirit events for school, he made sure everyone contributed.

"We all put in ideas for dress-up days and for the actual pep assembly, and then we voted on them," he says. "We all just worked together. Each person had a task. Mine was to make the videos."

He also learned to be more responsible and to keep track of things. "I never had a planner before raking on the leadership duties," says the 18-year-old math major. "I would have a class officer meeting in the morning, a National Honor Society meeting at lunch, and then right after school I'd have [to prepare] an order for our honor tassels and cords for graduation."

Davie says that his organizational roles gave colleges "a better view" of him. Plus, it didn't hurt that he had won state math competitions, played soccer and track, sung in the a capella choir, and starred in school plays.

Since colleges look not only at involvement, but "whether you have a say in what you're doing," he made sure he played up these leadership experiences in his applications. "One of my essays was about how the place you live in has contributed to the type of person you are," he says. "I wrote that living in a small community has given me chances to get involved in different things and be a leader."

A Challenging Summer Abroad

The summer before her senior year of high school, Rachel Bullard took her first airplane trip ever--a 17-hour flight to Botswana, a country in Africa. Bullard had won a $5,000 scholarship to spend five weeks in Africa with 10 students from all over the United States. Although five weeks may not seem very long, that's all the time it took to change Bullard's life.

Her journey began as a student at Murry Bergtraum High School in New York City, where she heard about the Experiment in International Living summer program, which offers educational adventures abroad. After completing an interview process and "essay on top of essay," Bullard won the award.

A few months later she was in southern Africa, feeling dry heat on her skin during the day and below-freezing temperatures at night, and eating a local favorite--porridge with fried cabbage, tomatoes, and canned corned beef. She visited a game reserve, went on safari, and learned the Setswana language. A good deal of her time was spent making about 800 cementsand bricks and laying the foundation for three houses through the Habitat for Humanity organization.

That fall, her summer experience shined through in her college applications. "[My essays] caught a lot of people's attention," says Bullard, now 19 and a pre-med sophomore at Alfred University in New York. "I would advise any person in high school to travel. So many programs are out there, and you can find them all on the Internet. If you can't pay for them, go for scholarships. Those experiences open your world completely. They show what kind of person you are. They show that you are open to other cultures.

"Schools look not just for textbook knowledge, but for [students] who want to learn about the world, their place in it, what they can do to help it. If you can bring that across in your application and essays--that you are a person who's going to bring personality, culture, diversity to campus--you are who colleges are looking for.